Black Thunder!

JAN. 25-FEB. 1

THURSDAY, JANUARY 25
Tank Farm Clothes bring back Tank Farm Records and put rock & roll resurrextraordinaries Lemon Sun on the top of it: "Telephone" is strokey (caps yours not mine) but also every song from old high school days via girls who used to shop at Black Hole in Fullerton (also that one Spoon song). The rest of them are a little more California pop—that kind of music they made up in the '90s that doesn't sound like the Beach Boys at all—but "Telephone" is good fun. Funny lyrics, too: I telephone/are you alive? Don't leave them hanging at Detroit.

FRIDAY
Happy birthday to Alex and his bar (Alex's Bar) at their special seventh one—they heal the sick, raise the dead and make all the little girls go out of their heads and sometimes directly to the turntables if it's a Bitches Brew DJ night. Big crazies tonight with the Briefs, who are mostly Teenage Head and kind of the Dickies and put on the sort of reliably athletic performance track touts demand from rookie fillies. Support by Black Fag (split with Gayrilla Biscuits ideally scheduled soon?) and hopefully someone jumping out of a big cake. Congratulations, guys.

PLUS: Irish Bros. release their Freedom Is a Lonely Thing CD: longtime readers may know that the Irish Bros. are actual bros. from the Irish family and really good guys all around besides, and though this new CD is sounding more rocked up than I thought these guys liked, there is some weird kind of thing they do here and always that very few other people even know to take a poke at. The Wray Bros. chopped out what they call "rural rock" in slabs in 1971 and although the rurality—ROOR-RAL-UH-TEE—of Orange, California, is a little wishful there's the same awesome honest spirit to this new record. "I Will Never Marry" is pretty quick here but still a great song: "I will never marry/never father children/do you doubt what I am saying/solitude will suit me/til the day I'm dead . . . " Like a Wray said: I'm so glad, I'm so proud. Congratulations, guys. At the Juke Joint in Anaheim.

Thurs., Feb. 1: Disparate

SATURDAY
It's automatic when we talk with old friends: Brian Wilson (Beach Boy) and Al Jardine(Beach Boy/dental adept) reunited for a pretty rare show to take pretty seriously, rebalancing the debt left when something legally called the Beach Boys came through OC a while back. Good thing Brian Wilson probably wouldn't have done an interview anyway because certainly this was my only opportunity to ever talk to him, and I didn't pursue it because he's too dignified to have to be bothered by people like me. The two nicest voices from Hawthorne (besides Emitt Rhodes) at the Long Beach Terrace Theatre.

SUNDAY
Nuked but not naked funk revue from SF-ish rock scum copping James Brown stable stars: Marva, Lyn and Maceo all get contorted for the thousand-piece (or nine piece) live show that is Her Grace The Duchess, including members of approximately one thousand (or nine or less) SF-ish scum rock bands. I'm all about insane ambition—I once waited three hours to see Zigaboo Modeliste play and when he finally teetered onstage in his especially tight special pants, what did he pick up to play but a guitar?—and it's insanely ambitious to throw even nine sets of arms around something by Betty Davis and expect to hold on, but then again there's a reason bars install mechanical bulls. Wrong song but right spirit right here: been to Nagasaki/Hiroshima too/what they did to them baby/they can do to you at Alex's.

MONDAY
Maybe you're not a lover/but in case you are/you can't do much lovin'/in a foreign car.

TUESDAY
Nuked and probably naked computer abuse from PRSHLTNMTHRFCKRS666USAFTW01101010001010 who sound like Q Lazzarus plus Laid Back ("Rish . . . /bish!") on beats a C64 would sweat to produce. Paperrad plus an American Apparel ad probably make this but who am I to even say that sentence? I just paid paper dollars for a folk record. It's not electro but it uses electricity and I bet it could barf wine in your bathroom depending on how good the party was. Boom/psh/boom-boom/psh at PRSPCTR for Kevin P.'s pantless party night nude naked Lindsay Lohan.

WEDNESDAY
You got to ride.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1
The Game is a rapper but also Wiki bait for Internet creeps viz this soon-to-be-erased idiot entry (under "Striper Carrier"): "It is quoted by some very disgusted mild age woman that The GaYme aka Black Thunder (stripper nickname 1900-1999) worked at the Compton Stripper House on 97th and 1st would get disparate and become a sex slave for almost any amount of money so he can buy his tounge ring and Denise Rhodeman tattoos which he thought was sexy but then covered them up with tattoos he saw on BET TV." Get mild at the HOB.